We already have antennas
on
Lunar Lasers
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
you simply stretch out a wire between two insulated poles, and the power just flows
You bring up an important point: powerlines and phone lines already cover the globe. They will pick up the power too. This may not be a good thing.
This is a weapon of massless destruction
on
Lunar Lasers
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The power sent as microwaves must be focused into some reasonable area unless they propose having antennas nearly the size of the moon on earth.
1. How will they focus the beam on receptor antenas?
2. How will they keep airplanes from flying across the beams?
3. Will they coordinate with satellite operators so they can avoid the beam too?
The only way for this not to harm you would be for it not to strike you. Early radar technicians learned about microwave cooking standing in front of such beams
We have a problem. The nature of business is to be competitive. Once a company gets a certain size it is expected to be socialistic instead of capitalistic? Who should measure?
I read the W3C submission by Stephen Satchell and like what he says. But that is beside the point. All he or anyone else in that capacity can be expected to do is hinder the business actions of the company they oversee. I think the UK tried that and failed in the 60s/70s.
Microsoft may railroad competition, but it is not a railroad. You can choose a different track if you like.
But our laws do not usually reach outside our borders. As this gets more notice, less and less spam will originate from within countries that prosecute. But the spam will not diminish.
This is not the fix. But it is always nice to see a spammer lose what they love most: money!
The concept of redundantly spreading information so you can construct the original from less than all the parts is the basis of RAID5. I first heard of RAID5 in the mid 80's. The point is that I see no new concepts at play here. Just the application of existing concepts to move files.
More power to them if they can do it right. Earth shattering innovation? Not at all.
Transporter Fountain creates not equations but hundreds of millions of "symbols" which can be used to reconstruct the data. The sending side transmits these symbols until the box on the receiving end confirms that it's collected enough symbols.
The power of this "press release" is that it fools readers like yourself into believing there is more there than the sum of the parts.
Read it dude. Think about it. Think huffman codes. Think fractal compression. Think run-length encoding. And yes, think disk spanning.
Don't be a j*erk. More important, don't be a pawn.
Our patent laws [require] companies to enforce their granted intellectual monopoly rights
Because the laws are there it would be negligent for an executive not to enforce their intellectual monopoly rights for company profit. The requirement that they do so is driven by threat of investor suit against the executives.
Your point is well taken that trademark laws literally require enforcement for claims to stay enforceable and patent laws do not. The pragmatics of the situation, however, give us the same result.
I'm not sure why investors are so bloodthirsty
It is called making money. We all want it. Law abiding people will work within the laws, no matter how screwed up, to get and keep it.
The quirk is that none of the data is ever transmitted; the receiving end creates its own copy of a file based on a complete set of mathematical equations.
This is called compression. Everybody is doing it and it has been done before.
When you download a ZIP file, you are not downloading the content. You are downloading a mathematically transformed version of it. You then translate it back. Modems have been compressing and decrompressing on the fly since the late 1980s.
Maybe they have a better compression scheme? (Fractal based?) That would be news. Everything else is a distraction.
if someone decides to make a PC that looks like a funky box will be get sued too?
Yes. But more likely, you will be threatened with a lawsuit. The threat is enough. (You= regular person with little or some money getting legal advice on slashdot / Them= multi-million$ company with team of lawyers wearing suits and drinking martinis) That is a fight you and most people will cower away from and that is what they know and that is why they would sue.
If it got to court would they win if you were not selling product? That is moot because you cannot afford the court battle.
So basically, competition is pretty much grounds for a lawsuit these days
Our patent laws require companies to enforce their granted intellectual monopoly rights. Anything else is fiscally irresponsible and subjects the company executives to charges of mismanagement by investors.
Honest businesses will do what the laws allow to make a profit. If the laws are cr@p, businesses will use those laws to cr@p on the competition.
I've worked for several of these over the years, and while some had patentable ideas, most didn't bother and simply forged ahead to get the product out the door
That happens more often than many people think.
From a consumers point of view, that is great!
Exactly.
logical to vilify the PTO. There is no doubt they (in general) cannot get their act together.
The people I've met from the patent office are good people trying to do a good job. What I think they do not appreciate, and most of the public has also not sensed, is that this is an absurd task in the first place. There is no right way to do it. The evidence keeps popping up but the remedial attention is always directed at the specific incidents, not at the fundamental concept that intellectual monopolies do what we as an enlightened society detest: they restrict the evolution and application of ideas.
This is not a football game. Taking sides is missing the point.
TV cards have been around since at least the late 80's for the PC. I would not call them serious entertainment systems. They are just novelties without a grand display.
Look, don't blame Microsoft. If companies and organizations are clamoring for digital rights management software
That misses the point. Companies should be able to create any software they think the market will support. The problem here is not with Microsoft, rather, it is that we have another example of fundemental computer science application granted monopoly rights by our friendly patent system.
Can't blame the companies when they are using our own laws to screw us.
That is exactly the point. There is no reason every computer should have a keyboard and expansion slots. Other examples are XBox, GameCube, Playstation, etc.
I consider these all personal computing devices that have been specialized.
If we define a personal computer as something that looks and misbehaves like what we have today, there will be no such thing as a personal computer a few decades from now.
I can imagine a market for high-end consumers if they would use a projection device and good stereo sound.
I'm planning to build a home theater in a few years and would consider that kind of packaged setup. Key of course is that it not seem like a computer with theater features. It should just be a real cool home theater package that happens to have an expandable computer at the core.
All our entertainment devices are becoming computers. DVD players, CD players, Tivo, and high-end TVs come to mind. Look for a microprocessor or two inside and you will find them. There are too many examples and new ones adding every year.
The computer already snuck into the living room and we did not notice.
Gateway was ahead of its time. About 5 years ago they sold a home entertainment package built around a PC and a large screen TV. Price was steep and it did not catch on at the time.
Perhaps now is the time.
Royalties until you take a dump?
on
Patented Seeds
·
· Score: 2
This is getting extra scary. Whose fault will it be if "patented" seeds get mixed with regular seeds and a farmer accidentally grows them? Will he be sued for selling the crop?
What if a company produces a patented plant that is not sterile and grows like a weed. Will you be required to get rid of it whenever you find it growing on your property? If it grows on your property, will you be banned from eating it or selling it?
Think that is too ridiculous to happen? Think again.
I wonder if licensing agreements printed on menus and cereal boxes are just around the corner.
This technology looks interesting but there is definitely a good share of hype in both the SciAm article and the company's web site.
In particular, there is a suggestion that there are cost savings in part because the surface area of a "3d chip" is less than "1d chips" since 1d chips have more surface area there is a greater chance a defect will happen within that area. (Thus "small yield.") This is a spurious suggestion for the following reasons:
1. Each layer of the "3d" chip is subject to abnormality risk. (Thus real risk is LAYERS x AREA x RISK. For 1d chip AREA is bigger, but LAYERS = 1.)
2. The chip is mechanically "ground flat" after each layer to prepare for the next. I'm sure this works and I am also sure there a failure rate greater than zero for this operation.
3. Perfect alignment of the layers is required otherwise one of more parts of the "cube" will fail. They are working on fault tollerance issues right now, and they should.
Bottom line is that every bad chip drives up the final production cost. This is true for 1d and 3d. Seems like all the risks of 1d apply to 3d and now there are a few more. How will this be cheaper in the short run?
Let's not get into the heat issue that has not been resolved.
I hope they succeed, but the oversimplifications made trying to sell this thing bug me.
The web makes no money. Some companies/people use the internet standards to make money, but the "web" itself does not. (For example, www.slashdot.com makes some money on the web through advertising.)
How will p2p make money? It will not. Some companies/people might figure out a way to leverage it though.
Slashdot Mirror
you simply stretch out a wire between two insulated poles, and the power just flows
You bring up an important point: powerlines and phone lines already cover the globe. They will pick up the power too. This may not be a good thing.
The power sent as microwaves must be focused into some reasonable area unless they propose having antennas nearly the size of the moon on earth.
1. How will they focus the beam on receptor antenas?
2. How will they keep airplanes from flying across the beams?
3. Will they coordinate with satellite operators so they can avoid the beam too?
The only way for this not to harm you would be for it not to strike you. Early radar technicians learned about microwave cooking standing in front of such beams
We have a problem. The nature of business is to be competitive. Once a company gets a certain size it is expected to be socialistic instead of capitalistic? Who should measure?
I read the W3C submission by Stephen Satchell and like what he says. But that is beside the point. All he or anyone else in that capacity can be expected to do is hinder the business actions of the company they oversee. I think the UK tried that and failed in the 60s/70s.
Microsoft may railroad competition, but it is not a railroad. You can choose a different track if you like.
You can see who is visiting your site, unless they are using an anonymizer proxy, or other system to hide your headers.
If no one clicks on the link to get to the page, you will never know the link exists. Do those links matter? Probably not.
But our laws do not usually reach outside our borders. As this gets more notice, less and less spam will originate from within countries that prosecute. But the spam will not diminish.
This is not the fix. But it is always nice to see a spammer lose what they love most: money!
The concept of redundantly spreading information so you can construct the original from less than all the parts is the basis of RAID5. I first heard of RAID5 in the mid 80's. The point is that I see no new concepts at play here. Just the application of existing concepts to move files.
More power to them if they can do it right. Earth shattering innovation? Not at all.
Transporter Fountain creates not equations but hundreds of millions of "symbols" which can be used to reconstruct the data. The sending side transmits these symbols until the box on the receiving end confirms that it's collected enough symbols.
The power of this "press release" is that it fools readers like yourself into believing there is more there than the sum of the parts.
Read it dude. Think about it. Think huffman codes. Think fractal compression. Think run-length encoding. And yes, think disk spanning.
Don't be a j*erk. More important, don't be a pawn.
Have you ever spanned disks with a ZIP file? Think of each disk as containing a "packet" of compressed information.
If you are missing a disk, yes the decompression fails.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
If I see a big face wearing glasses show up on my TV I'm chucking a hammer through it!
illegal copying already has a word for it
If not piracy, what is it? "Illegal copying" is two.
People are lazy. We all want a single word when we can get it. If that word is piracy, ohh well. On to other battles.
Our patent laws [require] companies to enforce their granted intellectual monopoly rights
Because the laws are there it would be negligent for an executive not to enforce their intellectual monopoly rights for company profit. The requirement that they do so is driven by threat of investor suit against the executives.
Your point is well taken that trademark laws literally require enforcement for claims to stay enforceable and patent laws do not. The pragmatics of the situation, however, give us the same result.
I'm not sure why investors are so bloodthirsty
It is called making money. We all want it. Law abiding people will work within the laws, no matter how screwed up, to get and keep it.
The quirk is that none of the data is ever transmitted; the receiving end creates its own copy of a file based on a complete set of mathematical equations.
This is called compression. Everybody is doing it and it has been done before.
When you download a ZIP file, you are not downloading the content. You are downloading a mathematically transformed version of it. You then translate it back. Modems have been compressing and decrompressing on the fly since the late 1980s.
Maybe they have a better compression scheme? (Fractal based?) That would be news. Everything else is a distraction.
if someone decides to make a PC that looks like a funky box will be get sued too?
Yes. But more likely, you will be threatened with a lawsuit. The threat is enough. (You= regular person with little or some money getting legal advice on slashdot / Them= multi-million$ company with team of lawyers wearing suits and drinking martinis) That is a fight you and most people will cower away from and that is what they know and that is why they would sue.
If it got to court would they win if you were not selling product? That is moot because you cannot afford the court battle.
So basically, competition is pretty much grounds for a lawsuit these days
Our patent laws require companies to enforce their granted intellectual monopoly rights. Anything else is fiscally irresponsible and subjects the company executives to charges of mismanagement by investors.
Honest businesses will do what the laws allow to make a profit. If the laws are cr@p, businesses will use those laws to cr@p on the competition.
The real losers here are everybody everywhere.
I've worked for several of these over the years, and while some had patentable ideas, most didn't bother and simply forged ahead to get the product out the door
That happens more often than many people think.
From a consumers point of view, that is great!
Exactly.
logical to vilify the PTO. There is no doubt they (in general) cannot get their act together.
The people I've met from the patent office are good people trying to do a good job. What I think they do not appreciate, and most of the public has also not sensed, is that this is an absurd task in the first place. There is no right way to do it. The evidence keeps popping up but the remedial attention is always directed at the specific incidents, not at the fundamental concept that intellectual monopolies do what we as an enlightened society detest: they restrict the evolution and application of ideas.
This is not a football game. Taking sides is missing the point.
MacTV-> 15 inch monitor
When it comes to TV, size does matter.
TV cards have been around since at least the late 80's for the PC. I would not call them serious entertainment systems. They are just novelties without a grand display.
Look, don't blame Microsoft. If companies and organizations are clamoring for digital rights management software
That misses the point. Companies should be able to create any software they think the market will support. The problem here is not with Microsoft, rather, it is that we have another example of fundemental computer science application granted monopoly rights by our friendly patent system.
Can't blame the companies when they are using our own laws to screw us.
That is exactly the point. There is no reason every computer should have a keyboard and expansion slots. Other examples are XBox, GameCube, Playstation, etc.
I consider these all personal computing devices that have been specialized.
If we define a personal computer as something that looks and misbehaves like what we have today, there will be no such thing as a personal computer a few decades from now.
I can imagine a market for high-end consumers if they would use a projection device and good stereo sound.
I'm planning to build a home theater in a few years and would consider that kind of packaged setup. Key of course is that it not seem like a computer with theater features. It should just be a real cool home theater package that happens to have an expandable computer at the core.
All our entertainment devices are becoming computers. DVD players, CD players, Tivo, and high-end TVs come to mind. Look for a microprocessor or two inside and you will find them. There are too many examples and new ones adding every year.
The computer already snuck into the living room and we did not notice.
Gateway was ahead of its time. About 5 years ago they sold a home entertainment package built around a PC and a large screen TV. Price was steep and it did not catch on at the time.
Perhaps now is the time.
This is getting extra scary. Whose fault will it be if "patented" seeds get mixed with regular seeds and a farmer accidentally grows them? Will he be sued for selling the crop?
What if a company produces a patented plant that is not sterile and grows like a weed. Will you be required to get rid of it whenever you find it growing on your property? If it grows on your property, will you be banned from eating it or selling it?
Think that is too ridiculous to happen? Think again.
I wonder if licensing agreements printed on menus and cereal boxes are just around the corner.
Sound of me slapping my forehead.
This technology looks interesting but there is definitely a good share of hype in both the SciAm article and the company's web site.
In particular, there is a suggestion that there are cost savings in part because the surface area of a "3d chip" is less than "1d chips" since 1d chips have more surface area there is a greater chance a defect will happen within that area. (Thus "small yield.") This is a spurious suggestion for the following reasons:
1. Each layer of the "3d" chip is subject to abnormality risk. (Thus real risk is LAYERS x AREA x RISK. For 1d chip AREA is bigger, but LAYERS = 1.)
2. The chip is mechanically "ground flat" after each layer to prepare for the next. I'm sure this works and I am also sure there a failure rate greater than zero for this operation.
3. Perfect alignment of the layers is required otherwise one of more parts of the "cube" will fail. They are working on fault tollerance issues right now, and they should.
Bottom line is that every bad chip drives up the final production cost. This is true for 1d and 3d. Seems like all the risks of 1d apply to 3d and now there are a few more. How will this be cheaper in the short run?
Let's not get into the heat issue that has not been resolved.
I hope they succeed, but the oversimplifications made trying to sell this thing bug me.
The web makes no money. Some companies/people use the internet standards to make money, but the "web" itself does not. (For example, www.slashdot.com makes some money on the web through advertising.)
How will p2p make money? It will not. Some companies/people might figure out a way to leverage it though.